A Fearful Thing
by potatoes-are-not-for-sex
Summary: 1000 words KicktheStickz story, inspired by vogonsoup. Love is a gift, a curse, a respirator and a death sentence, rolled into an irresistible package and implanted silently behind your ribs so you don't notice it there until they slice you open- you never had a chance.


_~for vogonsoup~_

The first thing that you notice are his eyes.  
They're different – and that's not to mean that they're too big, or strangely slanted, or a peculiar colour. It's an unusual shade of green but hardly extraordinary so.  
They're just special.

It's the way he holds you tight when you hug goodbye- there's a moment before he lets go where the arms tighten and the chin tucks more firmly over your shoulder and you can almost feel his heart hammering, reaching out to grasp yours behind it's fragile cage.  
You know that he hates goodbyes just as much as you do.  
You can tell that, just like you, he'd give anything to hold on to you, to that moment, he'd give absolutely anything if you'd just stay and smile and hold his hand and pretend that nothing ends and infinity is more than just a wish.

The cascade is overwhelming and it sweeps you away in its powerful grasp. Terrified, you're tempted to grab on to something familiar, just for a moment, because despite the joy you're petrified that you're going to lose yourself.  
But you don't, and it's the best decision you ever make- and the worst.  
It's perplexing when you realise you're falling in love, because that was never meant to happen to you, just everyone else and their fickle partners and dates and break-ups – but not you. This doesn't seem like anything else you've seen before. He's like no body else, flawlessly idiotic and caring at the same time, like that one you read in the novels, hidden in the library every lunchtime, the one who doesn't get the girl (and you spend the rest of the book wondering why on earth not).

And then you're not falling in love any more, which is strange, but warm.  
There's a routine that lacks the spontaneity, but also the anxiety, the clamour and restlessness. He in your videos, at the dinner table, meeting your parents, burning the soup, picking you up from the station, stealing your shampoo, sharing your bed – because from where you're standing it seems almost reckless to consider a future without him, so why shouldn't that start right now?  
You're _in_ love.  
Bliss.

His brother doesn't like you but your dog keeps trying to bite him whenever you visit your family for dinner, so there's very little inequality between you. He eats the long, soggy chips, you grab up the tiny ones that are crisp and sometimes black. You've always preferred the right side of the bed anyway. Sometimes at night you just sit there beside him, the soft skin of his thigh next to yours, so human, so read, so _alive, _and you're terrified at the thought of holding so much in your arms and terrified that one day you'll stumble and lose your grip.

And, of course, like every story, things fall apart.  
But, unlike most- you don't let them break you.

You sit there and you cry; both of you do. It hurts so much and it's hard but you keep on fighting and you make it through. Then, when you look at all the rubble around you, the fallen soldiers and broken dreams, you hold him even closer.

It's a matter of luck, a matter of choice, a matter of infinite chaos as the only infinity you should ever promise anyone. Everyone around you tells you that it must be fate, nothing else could be so absolute and 'meant to be'- but some days it just feels like a half-forgotten dream, waiting for you to look just a little so hard so it can fall apart at the seams, mocking you with every shattered stitch. Some days he looks across at you and sees the joker, the façade which was only ever meant to be for the rest of the world, but never for him.

You can't help it; you slip so easily behind that mask you wear so well. Sitting there beside the one person you wish would pull it off, scream at you and tell you that you never have to hide. But he doesn't and you stay hidden. It's a selfish indulgence, a comfortingly isolating shelter where nothing can hurt you, not time, not trust, not love.  
You're afraid.

You're afraid because, for the first time you've noticed things are beginning to break. And this time, it's not because of dramatic intention, confusions or mixed intentions. This time, there's nothing you can do, no friend to call and cry to, no box of chocolates to leave outside his door with a hand drawn card and the remnants of your broken, defenceless heart.  
This time it hasn't got anything to do with you; it's just time.

You find yourself sitting in frozen cold bathwater, not sure if it's the tears or the icy splash of water which stings the most, or the fact that the greatest irony is finding someone who's _perfect_ and then realising that there's nothing in this universe could hurt you more. What's the point, then, of it all?

That's where he finds you and, without question, slips in behind you and hold you close. Leaning back against his sodden jacket, you want to ask him so many things; why did he let you fall in love with him, how dare he even consider the fragility of humanity to be an option, why didn't he just lock the door, drive away and hide until it could all be over? Perhaps he would have been alone, but they would have both been safe.

That night, he's the strong one and lets you cry. Somehow you've always find his tears easier to clean.  
Somehow his arms are warm enough for two.

Until they're not.

Then there's nothing but an unsustainable urge to leap forward in time, gather up your days like rosebuds, great baskets of days and weeks of nothingness- and trade them in for a single hour by his side again.

For love, you'd do anything-

But you can't.

_'Tis a fearful thing  
To love  
What death can touch.  
To love, to hope, to dream,_

_And oh, to lose_.

_- Emanuel of Rome; 12th Cent._

[vogonsoup gave me the most beautiful prompt for phan, which is still in the making, but somehow it also inspired this- go check out her kickthestickz, it's phenomenal!]


End file.
